Is God good?

You seem to imply that all justice is evil if it is not immediate and swift.My reply is:1.) I do not believe all consequences are put off for a long time.
Even the rapist of yesterday may because of that suffer pretty soon, either at the hands of the law of society or in his own damaged being.So, #1, I don't believe ALL consequence is put OFF for some far far away date. Only a final ajudication is.2.) If judgement is ALWAYS immediate and swift then where is the place for possible repentence and ammending of one's ways?Seems that if God were to IMMEDIATELY punish then you would complain that He is not merciful and does not allow anyone a second chance in anything.3.) You have commited sins. (if you're anyting like me or the rest of us). Don't you find it benefitial that you may the next day contemplate your wrong, amend your way, perhaps apologize to the one offended ?You perfer a "less evil" system which would cut you down on the spot ?4.) The Bible says God is slow to anger. You complain that He would be more righteous if He were IMMEDIATELY angry ?5.) The allowing of time is merciful towards you. You prefer that God show LESS mercy ?Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Social Darwinism had such arguments. Wiser heads may now know better. But such excuses did exist in the last century.Oh, I think I stayed off the board for at least a year. Didn't I?
I have had a long gap of inactivity, possibly over a year.
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So you feel absolutely COERCED at this moment and cannot BUT think and write what you have just written ?Against your will then you feel a compelling power actually putting words into your mouth ?Well, I feel that I can choose to express this thought and write it this way. And I can choose to express another thought and write it that way. I do sense some ability to choose or reject certain things.You seem to be saying God is right now forcing you beyond your will to carry out His predetermined blasphemies which He has stuffed into your mouth and moves your muscles to spew out here.Unfair! Unfair! Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Okay, I procrastinated long enough. We examine the hard case of the Amalekites.A "destruction" is ordained in 1 Samuel 15 towards the Amalekites. God tells king Saul to [haram] - "utterly destroy" them. He is to "not spare" them. " ... put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey" (v.3) At the end of the chapter we might initially believe that Saul has killed every single Amalekite except king Agag. Saul has also spared some animals.We are told that God was displeased that Saul has not carried out His instructions thoroughly. The prophet Samuel takes it into his hands to finish off king Agag with a sword, hacking him to pieces.I am glad I started reading the Bible with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and not with Joshua or First Samuel. My opproach eventually became that if Jesus took the Old Testament seriously, then it must be ok.The Amalekites were a nomadic people who were vehemently opposed to Israel from the moment they crossed the Red Sea (Exodus 17). In the rear of the journeying Hebrews languished the weaker travelers. The Amalekites attacked the Hebrews from the rear where the sick, the slow, the most weary travelers lagged. This was cowardly and inhumanly vicious.These were the people most unprepared to fight.I am told that Amalekite was "a hand against the throne". The implication is that thier sin is more serious than against God's holiness. Rather it was against God's authority.They were continual threat to Israel's existence for generations (Judges 3:13; 6:3-5; 7:12; 10:12) Now the account of First Samuel 25 on the surface seems like the utter obliteration of the Amalekites in a genocidal sense. One easily gets the impression of not ONE single Amalekite left - a true genocide.However, in First Samuel 27:8 David is said to have gone up with his men and raided the Geshurites and the Girzites and the Amalekites. But I thought the Amalekites had been TOTALLY WIPED OUT already.No, the Amalekites were NOT genocidally exterminated in First Samuel 15. Neither were they exterminated in First Samuel 27. They appear again in chapter 30!David, long after Sauls supposed obliteration of the Amalekites, recovers from their raid Israelites and booty the Amalekites had stolen (v.18) Here's the genocided people that just don't seem to go away. "And David struck them from twilight until the evening of the next day; and not a man of them escaped except for four hundred young men, who rode upon camels, and fled." (1 Sam. 30:17)So neither Saul, Samual, or David completes the task of obliterating every last Amalekite. The Amalekites appear to be still around during the reign of King Hezekiah some 250 years after this time (1 Chron. 4:43) Still the Amalekites persist to exist during the time of Ester the Jewish Queen in king Ahasuerus / Xerxes reign in the book of Esther. This is between 486 - 465 BC. "Haman the Agagite" (Esther 3:1) must be a descendent of the Amalakite king Agag.And the Amalekite is STILL hell bent on the destruction of the Jews as evidenced by Haman's plots.At the time immediately after the Exodus God knows that the Amalekites will still be carrying out their hostilty a full millennia latter warns them in Deuteronomy 15:15-17 . The perpetual callousness of these enemies of Israel is probably God's reason to warn the Jews not to let up on their opposition to the Amalekites. Otherwise the unrecoverably hardened Amalekites would have had their way in wiping Israel off the face of the earth.I submit that the extermination of Israel in the hearts of the Amalekites was God's reason for His harshest instructions toward their elimination. The question I have as a moderner about this is could a people actually be that hostile and dangerous to God's covenanted community ? Apparently enmities could get that bad - "a hand against the throne" of God, perpetual opposition to divine authority.Other Canaanites DID assimilate into Israel. A point here is that the phrase "utterly destroyed" in reference to the Amalekites cannot be taken liturally.In the argots of the schoolyard we may hear that someone "got their butt kicked". It is an expression. Some scholars believe that Saul went up against COMBATANTS rather than noncombatants. The reason for this is that "the city of Amalek" (1 Sam. 15:5) was probably a fortified military encampment. That would mean that non-combatants would not be expected to fill this fortress.We have to account for the re-appearance of the Amalekites in successive stories.It should be noted that the language of "harem" of this complete destruction is not used in all the cases of Israel's enemies. The language is restricted.If Samuel's killing of Agag was the completion of the unfulfilled will of God left by Saul AND Amalekites reappear, then the charge of genocide I think is not appropriate. When we read about everything that breaths was killed, we have to be guarded.I may recall evidence that an Amalekite person seems assimilated into Israel in the days of David. But I have to double check that. I could be mistaken.

Could you quote me where I wrote that in this discussion or in any of the other 3,000 some posts I written here.Now I would say that there is a perfect will of God and what He might permit to happen. Some would say this was the permissive will of God.But I think your criticism sounds more like a complaint for Islam, that "Allah has willed it."No Drosophilla, it is evident to me that God's perfect will is not always carried out - thus the prayer Christ taught "Your kingdom come. Your will be done ..."Lol. I point out that that's your strawman argument. I never wrote it. I doubt that you can show me where anyone wrote that, though you might.And I bet you still think I'm "sick beyond the pale". What? My absolute moral conviction that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God?"Do you mean my absolute moral conviction that ALL may be justified in Christ, ALL may be reconciled to God in Christ, ALL manner of sins may be forgiven ?That's what at least 27 of the 69 books of the Bible are quite extensively devoted to. And this extended salvation to all, I think, demonstrates that God is indeed a good God.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Excuse me Doc Adaquate, for interjecting. But the OP seems to want us to assume that.The OP says: Well, I do not read of BEGGING God to intervene in the powerful example of Abraham interceeding for the city of Sodom. What I see is Abraham CHALLENGING God.Read Genesis 18. Here is a early example of God securing someone to be an intercessor for people. Abraham does not grovel and beg. Rather He reminds God by way of challenge, of His own just nature. "Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justly ?" (Gen. 18:25) No, no, no Dr. Adaquate. God is not interesting in our BEGGING. He is interested in our BELIEVING. This is about Second Kings 2:23-25. One scholar writes that these were not little kids:

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"'Little children' is an unfortunate translation. The Hebrew expression neurim qetannim is best rendered 'young lads' or 'young men.' From numerous examples where ages are specified in the Old Testament, we know that these were boys from twelve to thirty years old. One of these words described Isaac at his sacrifice in Genesis 22:12, when he was easily in his early twenties. It described Joseph in Genesis 37:2 when he was seventeen years old. In fact, the same word described army men in 1 Kings 20:14-15...these are young men ages between twelve and thirty."

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So maybe these were not all such little boys as critics assume. In fact Elisha may have been in or close to their own age group.The offense seems have followed a extreme act of MERCY done by the prophet Elisha towards the nearby city of Jericho. That was about 10 miles away!

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"Elisha's sweet memories of Jericho received a souring touch at Bethel (v. 23). The public insult against Elisha was aimed ultimately at the God whom he represented. Indeed Elisha's whole prophetic ministry was in jeopardy; therefore the taunt had to be dealt with decisively. The sudden arrival of the two bears who mauled forty-two youths to death would serve as both an awful sentence on unbelievers--and thus, too, on Jeroboam's cult city--and a published reminder that blasphemy against the true God and his program would be met with swift and certain consequences (v. 24)."

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The confrontation of this crowd and Elisha could have been actually a contest between the false prophets of Baal and the true prophets of Yahweh.

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"As Elisha was traveling from Jericho to Bethel several dozen youths (young men, not children) confronted him. Perhaps they were young false prophets of Baal. Their jeering, recorded in the slang of their day, implied that if Elisha were a great prophet of the Lord, as Elijah was, he should go on up into heaven as Elijah reportedly had done. The epithet baldhead may allude to lepers who had to shave their heads and were considered detestable outcasts. Or it may simply have been a form of scorn, for baldness was undesirable (cf. Isa. 3:17, 24). Since it was customary for men to cover their heads, the young men probably could not tell if Elisha was bald or not. They regarded God's prophet with contempt....Elisha then called down a curse on the villains. This cursing stemmed not from Elisha pride but from their disrespect for the Lord as reflected in their treatment of His spokesman (cf. 1:9-14). Again God used wild animals to execute His judgment (cf., e.g., 1 Kings 13:24). That 42 men were mauled by the two bears suggests that a mass demonstration had been organized against God and Elisha."

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Public safety may have also been involved. If this gang would roam around and mock one of God's prophets, there is no telling what other hoodlum activites they might have carried out.Today, if a group of 40 or 50 young poeple were carousing around showing public disrespect to citizens the police would probably be called. They may have been a serious threat to the public.

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"A careful study of this incident in context shows that it was far more serious than a "mild personal offense." It was a situation of serious public danger, quite as grave as the large youth gangs that roam the ghetto sections of our modern American cities. If these young hoodlums were ranging about in packs of fifty or more, derisive towards respectable adults and ready to mock even a well-known man of God, there is no telling what violence they might have inflicted on the citizenry of the religious center of the kingdom of Israel (as Bethel was), had they been allowed to continue their riotous course.

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Assistance from Glen Miller's Christian Thinktank above used by permission.cont. latterEdited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Doc, I'm a little bit limiteds this morning. But I do count God as ever idly by.Jesus says that it is His Father's will that not one of these little ones perish. While I cannot tell you I KNOW what little one has, I can at least vouch that the will of God apparently is that not one would perish.I'll will go so far to say to some of you guys that there are indeed some really tough places in the Bible. There is more than myriads of instances that warm the heart of God's longsuffering and forebearance.Is it a light thing the Christ is the propetiating offering that EVERYONE that has ever lived COULD be redeemed ? It is clear that many before His incarnation benefitted from His antitype act through the symbolic offerings prescribedd from God in the animal offerings.It is clear that it is not only those AFTER His act of obedience may benefit. It is clear that some prior to it are explained by Paul as having been also redeemed through their faith.You always want to assume the worst. I do not.
And my lack of knowledge prompts me to be like Christ in interceeding for people, for the world, for sinners. I think praying and sharing the gospel is vastly superior to sitting around and complaining and finding only fault as you are doing.God appeared as a man and had a conversation with Abraham before He judged Sodom. It was no accident. His purpose was to secure one on earth to act as an intercessor for Sodom. He sought a Christ like figure to petition on behalf of the cities.God sought a "friend" of Himself. Abraham was called a friend of God. He was one who understood God's ways and God's heart. Abraham foreshadows Christ also as every OTHER positive figure in the Old Testament does.You spend no time to befriend God perhaps. Perhaps you spend no time to pray intercessory prayers for the sinners. You devote your time to complaining against God to accuse Him because He will not drop His righteousness.I believe God is indeed good and just but will not drop His rightness. So there is the need for intecessory prayer on man's behalf.I don't think to spend one's life perfecting accusations against God is profitable. Standing in the gap as Jesus Christ did I think is more profitable.Ask yourself sometime, "Who and how many may perish because I was a prayerless person only laboring to formulate accusations against God?" Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

The presence of the Christians on earth is to fulfill the function of salt - "You are the salt of the earth". That is to restrict the world from becomming totally rotten.But back to the matter of God's goodness or not. To me there are two alternatives about where the cosmic buck really stops. It can stop in God or it can stop in some kind of material matter, ie. particles.We have these two choices:1.) In the beginning particles ...2.) In the beginning God ... Now I can account for a final moral perfection with God as the ground of all being.With particles as the origin of everything, I cannot. Or I haven't yet been shown how I could. So I believe "In the beginning God ..." accounts for a ultimate righteousness, beauty, meaning, justice.These are the attributes I see the atheist wants to cling to. But he doesn't want to think of them ultimately grounded in a final Governor.Then there's the problem of "God needs correcting."So if "In the beginning God" leads to a final source of being, how is it that this God has created creatures from whom He needs improvement ? How could they have in themselves something which God was not already furnished with to bestow ?The origin of some greater umpire or super authority by which God can be adjusted is a problem to me. If the cosmic buck does not stop with God then where does it stop ?Now when I look at my relationship with my parents or the relationship of my own little children to me as a parent, I see a realistic possibility. Maybe in some matters I lack the fuller knowledge to understand a certain action of God.I do not assume everything recorded as God's action in the history of His interaction with man, I would approve of at my current level of spiritual maturity.The important word there is "SOME" in this sentence - "Some things God did in the Bible are [not] well understood or explained by me."In your world philosophy, whatever it may be, are there some things for which you don't have a fully satisfactory answer yet ? Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

I think the Jesus of Nazareth is as high a moral perfection as I have witnessed on the earth. Ie. as close to Perfect as there is in history.
The second runner up would not even be in the same class, I think.You may have never seen "moral perfection" but you must have some scoring mechanism to distinguish between lesser moral behavior and better. Otherwise you wouldn't be objecting to God as evil.Some kind of scoring system you use to differenciate relative excellence, mediocrity, and abject failure. This scoring system is not unlike how you would score the performance of a golfer or boller.
You have a scale, a scoring board of some kind.So you have looked the Bible over and have SCORED God's involvement POOR, EVIL on your scale. You have a standard in mind- a moral scoring system of some kind.I would like to ask you: Where does the moral scoring system you use that allows you to identify evil come from in the first place?Where is a standard of good out there that makes the whole notion of evil intelligible? I think you must have a transcendent concept of moral duty to, or moral obligation to something that has given man this standard to which goodness is owed.I have a problem with duty in complete isolation.
So you think God is evil on the scale of Rule Maker WHO ?
I think moral conduct is in the realm of living beings with choice of will.The Bible begins "In the beginning God ...". And it says that God calls the things not being as being. " ... God, in whom he [Abraham] believed, who gives life to the dead and calls the things not being as being." (Romans 4:17b) Are there problems with the idea of God being the ultimate transcendent moral will to whom I am obligated ? Maybe so. This thread has attempted to highlight a problem - "God may not be good for doing this or that or the other. " That's the problem being argued here.You see, if I am made in the image of God as Genesis 1:26,27 states then whether I believe in God or do not believe in God, I still understand why I have a built in sense of the goodness or badness of moral acts.I don't have to be a Theist in order to have an opinion about conduct. I can be an Atheist and know something about goodness. Being an Atheist does not make me not made in God's image if Genesis 1:26,27 is true.If in the beginning there was only particles, real moral obligation seems meaningless in the final analysis. I don't think its an easy problem to solve - Moral Obligation without God in a universe which only knows material things as its ultimate essence. I can see why you'd rather wrestle with the delimma of Jersey Shore's popularity.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Okay. But there was a man like Adolf Hitler. And he just as strongly felt that he like to do harm to 6 million Jews. So you see you have your preference and he had his.Its left kind of arbitrary. It is left as a matter of personal preference. One like vanilla icecream and another likes chocolate. But I think you do need to feel an abligation to some abstract "something." I think you do have some sense of obligation aside from just preference. You may not know what it is. You have not explained well what is wrong with being sadistic anyway. You an say God is bad, God is evil all day long. Why is evil evil ?Hitler thought it was evil to allow the Jews to live.
You have your preference. Adolf has his.I think there has to be trascendent moral law and thus a transcendent moral law giver. You just telling me "Well, I just feel that I want to be good to my neighbor" is a weak foundation for really explaining moral obligation.Is it a material matter in the brain? Is it something in the blood? Do we need to identify the evil atoms or the evil genes in the human body and illiminate them ?Did Adolf Hitler just have bad genes ? Sure, you gave me your preference. You could also account for your preference in music or sports teams.Another person can just as easily say he prefers to go into a school and do the good of shooting up scores of unarmed students.

No jar. I think he thought it was his duty to Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Let's let Adolf Hitler speak for himself.

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"If nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such cases all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.

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But such a preservation goes hand-in-hand with the inexorable law that it is the stronger and the best who must triumph and that they have the right to endure. He who would live must fight. He who does not wish to fight in this world, where permanent sruggle is the law of life, has not the right to exist."

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[Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 4th printing (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1939, 239-240,242) ]

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You're in denial. I think the original title of the book was thus: " On The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection: Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life " So Hitler's comment about favored races was exactly consistent with the original description of the subject matter of the book.See Wikepedia http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oG7hTq4ctQzDsAyLxXNyoAThe bald face lying should be attributed to those who attempt to make out that the Gospel of Christ and New Testament was Adolf Hitler's main inspiration for Nazi Holocaust. And that is what poster jar tried to deceive us with.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

The matter was not irrelevant, I think. It came out in the exchange about a transcendent or universal standard of morality. When it was claimed that one was not needed to be good, I argued that such good was not strongly founded in anything much more than a personal preference.This I made the comment that as anyone has his preference so Adol Hitler can have his preference too. That is when YOU attempted to pen Hitler's motivation for the Holocaust on Christian Theology.I correctly pointed out that his motivation has a lot more to do with Darwin's theory of Evolution. Now you want to say that it is not on topic. You'd be better off just to admit that "Yea, Hitler did think it was a good thing for the Jews to be exterminated and the Germans to dominate all other races."Having honestly admitted that, then you could go on to challenge me how the Conquest of Canaan was any different. That's the way I would argue if I were in the position of seriously questioning the goodness of God. I am not sure that this sentence could be backed up with examples. You are welcomed to try.Here is what you have to do:Quote passages that SAY "God is good."Quote passages that SAY "God is an evil murderous tyrant."Now you cannot quote passages which record what God did and then add YOUR INTERPRETATION that the passages shows He was and evil tyrant. At least that is not what you claim above.You claim the Bible SAYS that He is an evil murderous tyrant.WHERE?Do not quote Genesis chapter 19 about Sodom and Gamorrah and then say "You SEE? He is an evil murderous tyrant." To back up you assertion QUOTE me where the Bible says that of God.Probably the ONLY place you could find such an accusation against God is in quoting either Satan or the enemies of God. Do some work. See what you can find.Otherwise, You're being sloppy, subjective, biased and misrepresenting the Bible. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

To be clear, I mean that Darwin's ideas about favored races played a major part in Hitler's rational for wanting to do his "Final Solution".Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Yes. For now I would put it that way.There is something there outside of man, transcendent concerning Good and Evil. It would exist even if man did not exist. Like the laws of logic would exist whether or not man existed. I think I spoke to this issue of "WHO exactly, is the transgression against?"We could say " I just did it to this guy and no one else." But that is not how the Bible teaches the matter of sin, trespass, transgression. The offense was against someone yes. But it was against God.David, after his affair stealing Uriah's wife, Bethsheba, and arranging for her husband to be murdered, admitted that his sin was AGAINST GOD. "For I do know my transgressions, and my sin is before me continually. Against You and You alone have I sinned." (Psalm 51:4) He does not say that the sin was only against Bethsheeba.
He does not say that the sin was only against Uriah the Hittite.David acknowledges that he has trangressed against God. God is the crucial third party involved.So the sin against masochist by the sadist, in God's view, is not just a matter of concenting and willing sinners. It is a transgression against God's law.When the victim is not knowledgeable about what has happened to her or him, God still knows. And we have sinned against God. This is why elsewhere He says "Vengence is Mine, says the Lord. I will repay." (Romans 12:19 comp Deut. 32:35) My main point above is that every trangression, every trespass is not merely against another person. It is ultimately against God's law.The good news is that provision has been made for out extensively GUILTY selves in the redemption of Christ.The hard part is coming to agree with God that, yes, we are guilty.
Agreement is not begging. Agreement is not necessarily groveling.
Agreement is just acknowledgement to the truth of the truth. Saying that there is an objective moral standard or a trancendent moral law does not mean some moral issues are not difficult. Some people say that if we admit to a transcendent moral law how will we then live? We have no book which consists of 100,000,000 chapters detailing excactly the good thing to always do.So there are difficult isues. And there are issues about how to apply to good. Many ethical situations are very difficult to codify.Regardless, I think this difficulty does not argue that there is not objective ultimate good. I think it rather argues that there IS this transcendent standard.God gave the Law of Moses to expose man's fallen nature of sin. Man gained something that he was very proud of - the knowledge of good and evil.But in reaching out for that knowledge he didn't realize what the result would end up being. The result was that -1.) Man does not have always the life power to perform the good that he knows.2.) Man does not have always the life power to resist the evil that he knows.The knowledge of good and evil did not equip man with the power to perform all the good, nor the power to resist all the evil. Man knows and even delights in what is right. He cannot always do it. He knows and hates what is evil. He cannot always resist it.In reaching for the knowledge of good and evil man came under the dominion of God's enemy. He was poisoned with some kind of foreign element which has a parasitic attachment to man's being.The Sin nature is like a huge cosmic leech. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.